The present invention relates to a resource management system, a method for selecting a candidate tag, and a candidate tag selecting program, and is applicable to the case of managing many resources by using a tag.
Hereinafter, on the Internet, a system in which many users attach a tag to a common resource (a picture and a web bookmark) for arrangement has been generally used.
For example, in the Flickr that is a picture sharing service for sharing a picture on the network (see http://www.flickr.com), an arbitrary tag such as “TOKYO”, “FOOD” or “PARTY” is attached to (associated with) a picture uploaded on a database, so that only a resource having a specified tag can be retrieved and extracted. Further, because resources are unnecessary to be classified in a specified hierarchical structure, a plurality of different images can be attached to one resource as tags, so that resources can be arranged further flexibly.
This tag attachment may be individually performed. However, in the case where many users share the same resource, it works further effectively. For example, in the del.icio.us that is a social bookmark service for sharing an web bookmark on the network (see http://del.icio.us), a user can attach an arbitrary tag such as “PROGRAMMING”, “GUIDE”, “SERVICE” or “SHOPPING” to a bookmarked web page for arrangement.
Further, this del.icio.us has a candidate tag present function in that if the same web page has been already bookmarked by other user, a tag attached by the above other user is presented as a candidate tag. Thereby, if a desired tag has been already attached by other user, it is unnecessary to enter the character string, and the user can readily perform tag attachment by selecting the presented candidate tag with a mouse or the like.
However, in the aforementioned candidate tag present function, when in newly performing a bookmark registration of an web page that has not been bookmarked by other user, because existent tag information cannot be used, the user have to enter a tag explicitly. Therefore, there has been a tendency that as to a famous web page of which the degree of sharing is high such that many tags have been already attached, plentiful tags will be attached and it can be readily retrieved, however, as to an web page newly bookmarked, because a tag attachment operation is complicated, tag attachment is not performed so actively.
As the above, in a conventional social bookmark service, there has been a problem that a tag attachment operation to a new bookmark is complicated.